The utility’s job is usually straightforward: to generate or buy power and get it to the customer. The customer’s job is to pay the bill and flip the switch. Microsoft wants to shake up that arrangement.

Seattle’s 84-year-old Aurora Bridge is built with steel downspouts that dump 3.2 million gallons of untreated rainwater directly into the ship canal between Lake Union and Puget Sound every year, something that bridge designers in the 1930s probably never considered to be a problem.